Review: Hollywood Bowl, Hull

A family day out bowling is a great way to spend time together during the school holidays or at weekends and as a bowling alley near to me has recently had a makeover, we went along to see what the new look Hollywood Bowl in Hull was all about!

Here is a shot of the interior:

We haven’t been bowling in ages so we got on our bowling shoes and selected the right ball!

Choosing the right ball is important for the technique, so Marie from Hollywood Bowl helped my children pick the right size for them. In this video you can see her helping my son choose then he goes on to achieve a great result at the pins – watch his victory dance afterwards!

On the video there was a 360 degree tour of the venue so you can see how nice it all looks now it has been revamped. A lot of the interior glass walls have come down which gives it a more modern and open feel and the decor is contemporary and exciting. We purposefully chose to visit early on a Saturday morning so that the venue would be quiet which helped me to get the kind of shots I wanted for my blog post. As the morning progressed it got busier with families in playing games and having lunch, and it was busy when we left!

Here are the bowling balls and lanes.

When you are allocated a lane, you add in the players names to the screen and then take it in turns to bowl. The object of the game is to knock all the pins down and you get 10 opportunities per game to get a strike. If you throw a strike (the best result) on the first throw, then you have knocked down all the skittles. If you only manage to knock some of the pins down, you get a second throw to try and get the rest. If you are a good bowler the game could potentially be over quite quickly but as we were not, and there were four of us playing, it took us about 45 minutes to play the first game.

Me and the kids all opted to have the lane barriers up on our throws so our balls didn’t end up in the gutter, but my husband had the barriers down and he still won the game! I think it’s his years of rugby training and sports in general – it helped him with laser focus!

After two games we went off to Harry’s Kitchen – the newly revamped diner restaurant for lunch. In all honesty I wasn’t expecting much. I was going to a bowling alley for lunch after all, so I thought I’d get a ‘fast food’ style burger. I was blown away by what we did get. The burgers are handmade on the premises, freshly to order and were delicious. We also got an onion ring stack, french fries, sweet potato fries, my son had a hot dog and everything was served attractively on wooden paddles. Take a look:

Don’t these look delicious?

Have a look at what we shared for dessert!

The prices were reasonable and the quality was fantastic. This would make a great family day out and they also do children’s parties and events for adults too if you are having a work night out.

Thank you to Hollywood Bowl, Hull for hosting us and special thanks to Marie for looking after us on the day – she anticipated our every need and was truly awesome. You can find this venue at Kingswood Leisure Park, Gibraltar Road, Hull, HU7 3DB. Tel: 0844 826 1461 or visit www.hollywoodbowl.co.uk

Disclosure: We were given two games of bowling and lunch at Harry’s Kitchen for the purposes of this review. All opinions are my own.